US Treasury Department Uses SWIFT To Track Financial Data, Wall Street Journal Report Says

For the past five years, the US Treasury Department has been investigating suspected terrorism using data gleaned from the SWIFT messaging service
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For the past five years, the US Treasury Department has been investigating suspected terrorism using data gleaned from the SWIFT messaging service, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The Treasury has used SWIFT to track suspected terrorist financing since Sept. 11, 2001 by way of a series of expansive US subpoenas, but until Thursday, the department had not discussed the program publicly.

Treasury officials told The Wall Street Journal that the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program has yielded important information essential to the apprehension of suspected terrorists and in halting terrorist activities.

The Treasury told The Wall Street Journal in a statement that the program “has helped to disrupt terrorist cells and operations and has helped save lives.”

But while US banks and institutions are more familiar with turning over information to government investigations concerning money laundering and terrorism, the program will likely meet with objections in Europe and other parts of the world, which have voiced concerns about the privacy of financial transfers in the past.

Treasury officials told The Wall Street Journal that subpoenas used to gather data for the program are based on a 1977 US law focusing on economic sanctions, known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and that Treasury lawyers determined that the department did have the jurisdiction to subpoena SWIFT.

The law enables the president to levy economic sanctions during times of and in dealing with national-security threats.

The law has been used, in some instances, to impose sanctions on rogue states.

SWIFT said in a statement concerning the program that it negotiated with Treasury officials about the scope of information that would be available to investigators to ensure confidentiality.

“Through this process, SWIFT received significant protections and assurances as to the purpose, confidentiality, oversight and control of the limited sets of data produced under the subpoenas,” the statement says. “Independent audit controls provide additional assurance that these protections are fully complied with.”

SWIFT says the program restricts intelligence analysts’ investigations, allowing them to search data only for specific individuals or groups suspected of terrorist involvement.

The company also said the data cannot be subjected to data-mining techniques such as pattern-seeking algorithms.

Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told the Wall Street Journal in a statement that the program is an “essential tool” in combating terrorism and said it had effective oversight and safeguards.

“It is not ‘data mining,’ or trolling through the private financial records of Americans,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “It is not a ‘fishing expedition,’ but rather a sharp harpoon aimed at the heart of terrorist activity.”

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